Pat Conroy's Novels

I just came across a bunch of Pat Conroy novels on a shelf in my study and stood pondering them, and thought maybe I should write a little something here about him and his books. As we enter the summer season of reading big books on vacation, maybe one of his should accompany you down to the beach, or wherever you go to relax. I mean, of course, along with one of mine. 

I like Pat Conroy a lot. And I like his books. I had the chance to sit and talk with him for quite a while one night, just the two of us, and came away with the feeling that he's a really good guy. I then heard him speak to a big group of people and was really impressed with his talk. He was funny. And moving. Just like his books. Born and raised and educated in the south, he's a man who paid attention growing up and stocked his mind and heart with the stories of this distinctive region that he’s been sharing with the world for many years.  

He wrote his first book while he was still in school, and then followed up with a string of best sellers that continues to this day: 

The Water is Wide – a heroic year of teaching on a small island off the coast of South Carolina, now the basis for two great movies,

The Great Santini – growing up in the home of a fighter pilot, and having to fight for any small measure of independence and dignity while surrounded by violence, prejudice, outrageous demands, and some surprising sides of love,

The Lords of Discipline – the experience of a southern military school: hazing, torture, friendship, self-mastery, hope, betrayal, and honor,

The Prince of Tides – one family’s struggles with tragedy and madness, much of it in the midst of great beauty, along with one man’s attempt at making sense of it all,

Beach Music – the gravitational force of family and how hard it is to achieve escape velocity from place and blood, no matter what you do,  

My Losing Season – where basketball meets the rest of life,

And even a cookbook that people with culinary talents I don’t have say is one of the compelling cookbooks of our day. There are other titles, as well, but those are the ones I know.

Pat Conroy’s themes are as universal as his sense of place is particular: The experience of adversity, the power of friendship, the complex cauldron of family in which we’re all formed, the incredible lure of the low country with its rich display of the wonders of nature, here at the edge of America where I live. You can experience shock and trauma on one page of a Conroy book, and find yourself laughing out loud in the very next chapter.  

Some of the best reading times I’ve ever enjoyed have been in Pat Conroy’s books. I’ve read them even when I really should have been doing other things. I’ve relished every one, and I’ve even taken notes. You see, Pat Conroy is a good philosopher – an astute diagnostician of human nature. But, most of all, he’s a master of stories.

Whenever I’m reading one of his books, I think I appreciate my family and friends a little more, I breathe the fresh salt air of my town a bit more deeply, I linger outside a touch longer to watch water birds move across the sky, and I get really hungry. The descriptions of food in Pat's books are pretty amazing, which is possibly why he had to do a cookbook for us, to help satisfy at least one of the cravings his pages create.

So: Do yourself a favor, and try out one of his books, if you haven't already. Or grab one you haven't read. It's sure to be a great summer read.

Familiarity

There's an old saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt." And I think it's wrong, at least, as normally understood. I suspect that familiarity rather breeds a lack of awareness. The most familiar things, we look beyond. We rarely focus properly on them. We take them for granted. We ignore them. And that creates problems.

What's the closest, most familiar thing of all to each of us? Our own mental stream or theater of consciousness. The solitariness and uniqueness of our inner experience. Nobody else has my state of consciousness right now. Nobody else has yours. And we can know only as much about it as you might be prepared to share and reveal. But it can never be shared fully. The inner sanctum of you can never be fully put into words and conveyed to another person to the extent that they would know 100% what it's like to be you, to think like you, see like you, feel like you. 

And I don't think we spend enough time pondering that inner self. When the Greeks advised "Know Yourself" they meant all of our inner reality, including things normally hidden to our conscious states. But they also meant this. What is the flow of your experience, in your mental and spiritual hiddenness? What tonality of feeling or attitude colors the inner you throughout the day? Is it helping you to develop into the person you want to be, or is it holding you back? Is it conveying patterns into the future that belong to your past, but that will prevent the best outcomes you most desire? We ignore our inner lives to our great detriment.

And then, I think, the second ring of familiarity may be our bodies. We too often ignore one or more aspects of our physical being in ways that aren't conducive to health and flourishing. Sure, some people seem to fixate on their bodies. But most of us ignore some aspect of our physical needs that would benefit from more attention.

And then, think beyond yourself: The next ring of familiarity may be your immediate family. The things of the world that demand our attention, added to those that lure our attention, can easily cause us to overlook, and pay insufficient attention to, the closest people around us. And that's deeply detrimental, to us, and to them.

We need reminders now and then not to let the most familiar things in our lives go begging for our attention, which is almost always focused elsewhere. The stuff that's elsewhere will never enhance our lives well, unless we're taking care of the most intimate parts of our existence and experience. So my advice today is: Don't let familiarity breed either contempt or unawareness - or, rather, what may actually be the contempt that consists in habitual unawareness. Rather, use the intimacy and proximity of those closest things for proper exploration and cultivation, creating a sound and healthy foundation for all else.